More Russians tracing their roots
Genealogy latest fad in nation that tried to cloak ties to aristocracy
Published 5:30 am, Sunday, October 8, 2006
MOSCOW — As a child, Sergei Telyatnikov listened to family tales about his departed great-grandfather, a wealthy nobleman. But in the repressive decades of the Soviet Union, Telyatnikov's family tree remained obscure and was discussed only in hushed tones behind closed doors.
Many Russians in the Soviet era knew very little of their lineage predating the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, and those who did often went to great lengths to hide it.
But with the economy now booming in post-Soviet Russia, tracing roots is a fad sweeping the middle and upper classes. Russians like Telyatnikov are searching their family trees to get a better sense of identity in a country with a tumultuous and violent history.
Telyatnikov, now 47, hired a newly sprouted Russian genealogy search company and submitted the names of relatives in the stories that his paternal grandmother had told him.
Eighteen months and $2,000 later, Telyatnikov learned his family indeed had a wealthy great-grandfather and was related to other famous characters in Russia's imperial past: Dmitry Mendeleyev, the creator of the periodic table; Alexander Blok, the Russian poet; and Joseph Billings, a British seafarer hired by Catherine the Great to discover a passage via Russia's North Pacific Coast.
It wasn't exactly the kind of information the Communist Party would have welcomed.
No clue of the pastIn the communist era, many Russians were denied party membership and prestigious positions in Soviet organizations because of suspected aristocratic bloodlines. The years of upheaval during the revolution and under Lenin and then Stalin caused massive dislocation, and many first generation Soviets grew up orphans with no knowledge of their past.
"Some of my friends who know about my family tree joke with me and ask if they need to stand up when I enter the room now," Telyatnikov said.
Professional searches can take a year or more and cost from $1,000 to $5,000, plus transportation costs for sending researchers to dig around in remote, regional archives.
Many more Russians are discovering family lines through a number of Russia-based genealogy Web sites and computer programs.
But many Russians are retrieving disappointing results. Experts say few are lucky enough to find aristocratic roots like Telyatnikov.
In Russia, 90 percent of the population were peasants before the revolution, so most Russians are finding out their ancestors were landless villagers.
"Those who want to find a famous person in their family history usually think they will be able to improve their status, but more often, they pay a lot of money and find out they were nothing," said Mikhail Gershzon, a genealogist from the International Genealogy Research Institute.
Archives in poor shape
Russia has a vast, decaying archive with reels of microfiche and stacks of handwritten documents from church records to tax payments.
The Communist Party also was meticulous about record keeping. But many of the surviving archives are often in poor condition, housed in crumbling buildings and staffed by underpaid workers. Wars and fires destroyed many archives through the years.
Getting copies of needed documents still means completing a tedious, Soviet-style system of formal, written requests.
Hobbyist genealogists have created a network of volunteers from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok via Web site forums and chat rooms to track down birth and death certificates and other documents.
Searching for answersMikhail Kroutikhin , a magazine editor in Moscow, knew only his father's name and where he worked when he began his search several years ago.
His parents were "good communists who played it on the safe side" when speaking about the past. As a child, Kroutikhin never knew his grandparent's names.
After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Kroutikhin, 59, was ashamed about how little he knew of his family history compared with Europeans he met, he said.
Five years ago, Kroutikhin found his father's job application in the archives of the Moscow Metro, where his father had worked until his death in 1951. Employees were required to reveal their family history on their applications.
With the names of his grandparents and their birthplace, Kroutikhin began his search and eventually traced his roots to the Volga River region and ancestors who lived in 1615.
He then began offering out his expertise and posted Russian genealogy resources on his Web site.